Swordmage: Isn't it a little bit unbalanced?

[Sunseeker]

Pre-MM3 yes.

The shielding swordmage at epic is arguably the saddest thing you've ever seen. When he's doing basically nothing to enemies that are chucking out absurd damage it takes the shine off it. Assault swordmages are a lot better at epic, because attacking something and killing it is ultimately better now than just slightly mitigating horrific doom.

Like 22 damage negated or so was a lot a long time ago. Now it's merely a minor annoyance and won't significantly budge many creatures attacks that much anymore. Especially brutes that get multiple attacks, who won't be concerned whatsoever. I find that when PCs are dropped at epic, the overkill is massive. They aren't being dropped by 1-2 HP, they're being dropped in the order of -30 or so into negatives.

Exactly, with emphasis. Hurting a foe gets their attention much faster than slowing it down.

granted, this is also "at epic" and "at epic" is a place where other topics state people rarely go.

 

[striatic]

Like 22 damage negated or so was a lot a long time ago.

point taken, but at low epic a Shielding Swordmage will be preventing 26 or 27 damage, not 22.

you need to factor in the Greater Aegis of Shielding feat, which adds +5 to the damage reduction.

there's also the Rapid Aegis Reaction feat, which allows you to use your Swordmage immediate interrupt twice per round instead of just once.. so if you are preventing damage from multiple marks or interrupting multiple attacks from a solo, you should be preventing up to 54 damage per turn, not up to 22.

 

[Aegeri]

point taken, but at low epic a Shielding Swordmage will be preventing 26 or 27 damage, not 22.

you need to factor in the Greater Aegis of Shielding feat, which adds +5 to the damage reduction.

there's also the Rapid Aegis Reaction feat, which allows you to use your Swordmage immediate interrupt twice per round instead of just once.. so if you are preventing damage from multiple marks or interrupting multiple attacks from a solo, you should be preventing up to 54 damage per turn, not up to 22.

It's the individual attack damage that matters however, because in reality with the damage before you'd have easily negated two attacks. Now you've just barely stopped one of those monsters attacks: The second punches straight through. Now that damage isn't crippling the only creature that does anything initiative wise are monsters: They can purely ignore you, let you try to stop their attacks feebly and just kill the Wizard anyway. Your parties Wizard isn't going to be happy when the Balor beheads him for 74+3d12 damage. Taking off 27 damage off that is a hollow victory for you at best - the Wizard is dead when the rest of the monsters just beat him to death.

Now that you have 5 (or more) monsters, making a large number of overall attacks and all are doing really solid damage the best way to handle this is to reduce the number of monsters: That means killing them and not merely delaying them. To use a non-brute and non-Balor example, there are skirmishers who are happily running around doing a close burst 1, 4d10+16 fire and force +15 ongoing damage twice on their turn. These powers will shred most of the party and there are 4 other monsters that have similar capabilities.

Preventing 54 damage - assuming they aren't just killing you (which monsters are more than capable of doing to any defender now) - is not going to bother them much. You've prevented one and a little bit of a second attack. In reality they will just realize you can't do anything to them in reality, so will just plain ignore you and head straight for the leader and controller. Crunch crunch crunch shortly after and you're leader is dead, you're controller is bleeding on the floor and you're beginning to wonder what you're supposed to be doing.

Incidentally, it's worth noting the Battlemind has improved dramatically with the shielding swordmages fall at epic. You can believe that Battlemind is happy when his Mindspike deals a really solid amount of damage to that monster who tried to take a chunk out of the Wizard. In fact monster attacks are so strong, they don't really like being hit by their own attack damage that much. So attacking the Battlemind instead of ignoring him is quite important, because it's going to hurt!

 

[striatic]

Exactly, with emphasis. Hurting a foe gets their attention much faster than slowing it down.

except there's no guarantee that you will hurt the foe.

a fighter still has to hit with their OA. if a monster has a high AC, the DM has a choice to make, and the risk of getting hit by the OA may be rather low. many monsters also have movement modes that make OAs impossible, like teleportation or "move without drawing OAs" abilities.

far fewer [maybe not any?] have abilities that negate SSM damage reduction.

the Assaulting Swordmage has similar problems. i've only played an assaulting build in heroic tier, and quite often the DM would ignore my mark because they figured i might roll low, or they could avoid line of sight, or they'd drop the target of their attack before my immediate reaction went off.

.. or they just figured i'd hit them but they'd do more damage relative to total HP to my squishie buddy than i would do do to them, and would ignore the mark despite figuring everything would work as planned for the swordmage.

shielding is a sure thing, and it is an interrupt. and it gets the most attention from the monsters. that's why i switched from playing assaulting to playing shielding. it just worked much much better, despite not being able to bounce around the map like Nightcrawler anymore : [

 

[Aegeri]

far fewer [maybe not any?] have abilities that negate SSM damage reduction.

I would technically argue the vastly increased damage already does this more than adequately. A monster that can stick around and do major damage round after round, as compared to having the "Dead" condition upon it from an attack is a happy monster. A brute that attacks 3 times for example, is not concerned you can reduce the damage on the first two attacks when he's going to turn the Wizard into paste within 30 HP of damage (That any of his attacks, including your mark, easily deals).

On the other hand, when he's low on HP and needs to make that decision of "Do I provoke a mark that will kill me before 3 attacks, or do I risk it for high reward" has a much greater dilemma.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

Rapid Aegis Reaction does sound excellent, for those who can use Dragon material. Are my campaigns so unusual in that none of my DMs allow Dragon?

 

[Mirtek]

It's the individual attack damage that matters however, because in reality with the damage before you'd have easily negated two attacks. Now you've just barely stopped one of those monsters attacks: The second punches straight through.

Which is still better than stopping no damage at all.

The new single target damage expression for a level 30 creature is 4d8+20, average 38. If the swordmage blocks 27 of this it's still 70% damage blocked.

They can purely ignore you, let you try to stop their attacks feebly and just kill the Wizard anyway.

Except that soaking up 70% of their damage is anything but feebly.

Now that you have 5 (or more) monsters, making a large number of overall attacks and all are doing really solid damage the best way to handle this is to reduce the number of monsters: That means killing them and not merely delaying them.

This is only a win is the extra speed you bring to the kill (solely from the one CC attack) is equal to the % of damage prevented.

If the CC attack makes the monster die 30% faster while the swordmage could block 70% of it's damage, than it's a victory for the swordmage.

To use a non-brute and non-Balor example, there are skirmishers who are happily running around doing a close burst 1, 4d10+16 fire and force +15 ongoing damage twice on their turn. These powers will shred most of the party and there are 4 other monsters that have similar capabilities.

And likely ignore both the SM and the fighter because they are including them in their bursts anyway.

Now assuming that the swordmage or fighter are not included but they hit 4 teammates for their 36 average damage +15 ongoing (for a quick calculation being worth 30 damage). That would be (36+30)*4 = 264 damage per round. If the swordmage blocks 54 that's 20%. Does the fighter CC attack equal 20% faster dying of the monster?

 

[Eldragon]

Pre-MM3 yes.

At the risk of Topic Hijack (Apologies to the OP):

I have yet to read MM3 (let alone play it), or played a SM at epic. So I can't really comment on how the swordmage fares. I understand the errata+MM3 pushed through a lot of changes to the core mechanics. Since in my current game all my players are RPG newbies; These players aren't interested in reading errata. So without the corresponding fixes on the PC side, I'm wary of introducing MM3 and "Essentials" content less I accidentally break their characters.

The shielding swordmage at epic is arguably the saddest thing you've ever seen.

Do you mean when using MM3 monsters, or even using only MM1?

Would this mean that older classes like the Swordmage need a rules update to make them useable in an "Rules as of Dec 2010" environment?

 

[striatic]

Your parties Wizard isn't going to be happy when the Balor beheads him for 74+3d12 damage. Taking off 27 damage off that is a hollow victory for you at best - the Wizard is dead when the rest of the monsters just beat him to death.

that's a poor example. a very specific monster and specifically a critical hit condition. obviously the Battlemind is going to be much better in that situation, mostly because the Balor is huge and staying adjacent for Mind Spiking should be really easy [assuming everyone has fire resistance].

but the shielding Swordmage doesn't suck against it as much as your example describes. the SSM can hit it every turn with frigid blade, reduce its land movement to a maximum four square charge. try to keep it from even getting within range of the wizard, who should also be pushing it back and trying to stun it or what have you - then use the damage reduction on smaller creatures that might get through.

plus you really should be dropping Swordmage Shielding Fire on that thing. if you can't slow it down enough, like when you inevitably miss with Frigid Blade, you Prevent 27 of its damage and deal 27 to it. on a non-crit the Balor averages 41 damage, so it'll deal around 14 and take 27. that's not a bad deal.

To use a non-brute and non-Balor example, there are skirmishers who are happily running around doing a close burst 1, 4d10+16 fire and force +15 ongoing damage twice on their turn. These powers will shred most of the party and there are 4 other monsters that have similar capabilities.

this is the real problem with the SSM. can't prevent ongoing damage riders.

you party is going to need to have ways of dealing with this at Epic. leaders that can hand out pre-emptive save attempts, transference weapons and other items that deal with conditions. SSMs can draw out the battle and that enhances the potency of ongoing damage. You need to be aware of this specific weakness so you can cover for it.

it is also likely where any second defender in your party is probably going to want to take the lead by marking the ongoing damage dealers while you mark everything else. it's a team game.

assuming they aren't just killing you (which monsters are more than capable of doing to any defender now)

you've got to know when to parry gauntlets+total defense or turn invisible or use temp hit points/damage negation powers or get healed or spark your epic level regeneration or whatever of the many tricks you have selected for dealing with getting mauled but that's just part of being a defender now. you need the ability to turtle.

 

[Herschel]

In regards to AC and the Swordmage I find an interesting conundrum with the Assault version: How high do you want your AC? There’s a school of thought that says keep the defender’s AC just a point or so above the other party members. If you’re too hard to hit, you won’t be able to do your job as well because the –2 isn’t as big of a big deal. (Shielding pre-MM3 was all about boosting the D)

I’ve found that with other fairly durable melee characters or a lot of backfield squishies on the board jacking the defenses is still good practice if also boosting accuracy. While the –2 may be a slightly lesser detriment, if you disobey my mark I am going to hit you and set up combat advantage for my melee pal. If the backfield has squishies, then I have to be able to take more attacks. For this reason I stick with a one-handed, +3 weapon (and usually a long sword because of feat shortages). I’m not missing the d12 damage die vs. the d8 if I’m hitting more often and gain non-die-dependent damage where I can.

Plus, Swordmages generally do slightly less damage/attack because it behooves them to use a bit “smaller” weapon, so it only makes sense they have a slightly higher defense to compensate/balance it.